It's interesting to note that this record was once again set along a very specific stretch of highway in Battle Mountain, Nevada which is prized for its near perfect flatness and is often used for human-powered vehicle record attempts.
The world's fastest human-powered vehicle tops 85 mph
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Re: The world's fastest human-powered vehicle tops 85 mph
#72I wonder how much impact a professional track cyclist would have. Im sure the current pilot is a strong rider, but if you got a world record sprinter into the world record bike, how fast could they go?
A professional track cyclist would be quite inferior to these riders. These aren't some average Joe riding here: they're they best high-performance cyclists in the world. For example, this particular record was long held by Sam Whittingham: I invite you to see his Wikipedia entry. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Whittingham
Re: The world's fastest human-powered vehicle tops 85 mph
#73It's interesting to note that this record was once again set along a very specific stretch of highway in Battle Mountain, Nevada which is prized for its near perfect flatness and is often used for human-powered vehicle record attempts.
The course is not perfectly flat, but it is perfect for the contest.
The rules for this event stipulate that the track cannot be slopped downhill by more than 0.66%. Conveniently this track averages 0.64% downhill over the entire 5 mile duration. [1]
The story about how Raymond Gauge (what an aptronym!) happened to find this particular stretch of road makes for it's own fascinating big data tale. Months of mining away on USGS tables with Celeron processors to get 10 suitable tracks. A documentary made a few years back went into the specifics with plenty of dramatic shots of him driving the lonely stretches of Nevada, New Mexico, Kansas, etc whittling down his choice candidates until he settled on Battle Mountain.
The biggest limitation in these events is air resistance. Plenty of other folks have gone significantly faster on bicycles not facing a headwind[2]. Altitude helps.
[1] http://www.recumbents.com/wisil/whpsc2015/whpsc_site.htm
[2] 207.9 mph - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycling_records#Speed_record_o...
Re: The world's fastest human-powered vehicle tops 85 mph
#74It's interesting to note that this record was once again set along a very specific stretch of highway in Battle Mountain, Nevada which is prized for its near perfect flatness and is often used for human-powered vehicle record attempts.
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Re: The world's fastest human-powered vehicle tops 85 mph
#75I was gonna say this makes me realized just how aerodynamically inefficient a regular bike is, but then I found out that the world record of cycling on flat surface is actually 83.13 mph [0], which is actually pretty close to this. Assuming the rider is also top notch, I guess the benefit from optimizations done on aero isn't much larger than the weight added. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycling_records
wikiepedia doesn't check it's own references. The speed is for a human powered vehicle (fully fared). Edit: All the flat records in the section you're referencing are for hpvs, not tradition bicycles, as a look at the pages of the riders will show. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sebastiaan_Bowier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Buatois
Thanks for pointing that out!
Re: The world's fastest human-powered vehicle tops 85 mph
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually, on a flat surface with a constant speed or acceleration, weight matters much, much less than frontal area. Weight comes into play much more when many quick accelerations or elevation gains come into play. Because frontal area doesn't increase proportionally with weight, I would argue that power output should be the primary concern and that typically increases substantially with weight. For evidence of this,…
Was wondering the same since, this is about top speed and not about acceleration the weight shouldn't matter much at all, since it has no direct influence on the air resistance. Would be interested in knowing, if a human powered vehicle on steel rails with steel wheels with the same air resistance could be faster than this just due to the lower rolling resistance.
You've got it reversed.
Weight shouldn't have as much of an impact on acceleration because as muscle mass & power goes up, weight goes up as well.
But more weight inside the shell doesn't increase air resistance, while it does increase power. So a heavier rider with greater sustained power output will, in an environment where wheel friction is trivial, go to a considerably faster top speed on flat ground.
Re: The world's fastest human-powered vehicle tops 85 mph
#77I'm guessing something can't get much more aerodynamically shaped? I wonder if they used a power meter to measure the driver/rider's power output and whether the driver was an accomplished cyclist. It seems that at this point, it would simply be a matter of getting a stronger cyclist, say someone like Brad Wiggins who can push 430 watts for an hour over an amateur, but still respectable rider, who puts out something…
A time trialist wouldn't excel at 5 minute efforts. A track cyclist would, though.
Re: The world's fastest human-powered vehicle tops 85 mph
#78I'm guessing something can't get much more aerodynamically shaped? I wonder if they used a power meter to measure the driver/rider's power output and whether the driver was an accomplished cyclist. It seems that at this point, it would simply be a matter of getting a stronger cyclist, say someone like Brad Wiggins who can push 430 watts for an hour over an amateur, but still respectable rider, who puts out something…
Todd is actually a world-class rider (based on the chart you provided, as well). From the article before they won the Sikorsky prize: "Reichert, a national-level speed skater, can pedal at 1.2 horsepower for a full minute" http://m.thestar.com/#/article/news/gta/2012/08/26/humanpowe...
He also has a PhD, and was part of the team that designed and built it. From the wikipedia page about the helicopter:
"The peak power of 1.1 kW (1.5 hp) was only generated during the first few seconds to climb to the required 3-metre (9.8 ft) altitude. By the end of the flight, power had reduced to 600 W (0.80 hp). Todd Reichert, the pilot and a racing cyclist, had specifically trained for such a power profile."
Re: The world's fastest human-powered vehicle tops 85 mph
#79So let me get this straight, WeChat and other major companies are downloading pirated Xcode software which has malware?
Re: The world's fastest human-powered vehicle tops 85 mph
#80It's interesting to note that this record was once again set along a very specific stretch of highway in Battle Mountain, Nevada which is prized for its near perfect flatness and is often used for human-powered vehicle record attempts.
The course is not perfectly flat, but it is perfect for the contest. The rules for this event stipulate that the track cannot be slopped downhill by more than 0.66%. Conveniently this track averages 0.64% downhill over the entire 5 mile duration. [1] The story about how Raymond Gauge (what an aptronym!) happened to find this particular stretch of road makes for it's own fascinating big data tale. Months of mining awa…
Interesting that for land speed records you generally need to do two passes of a course one in each direction and your speed is an average of the two passes in order to prevent these types of shenanigans ;-)